


Yours Most Sincerely

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: "AU Suggestion: Thor runs a newspaper article in the stylings of Dear Annie, wherein people write in to get advice."In which the children of New Asgard decide to adopt a well-respected small-town Midgardian tradition and start up a newspaper. Who better to enlist as an advice columnist than the king himself?(Thor could suggest plenty of people, but he figures he ought to give it a try.)





	Yours Most Sincerely

…

The official population of New Asgard stands at two hundred and twenty-four individuals, counting the child born in April who arrived as a foreigner in a foreign land but not counting eight dogs, ten cows, twenty pigs, fifty chickens, one nanny goat, an excessively stubborn pickup truck that backfires like a howitzer and a gigantic battle axe made of star-metal that has not yet learned the elusive art of turning tight corners when it flies.

Which is why, in short, Thor is so surprised when he is handed a Volume 1, Edition 1 copy of the village newspaper.

The older of the two children on his doorstep raises the paper higher in her hands, perhaps assuming Thor cannot read the paper’s masthead – THE WEEKLY GJALLARHORN – or its headlines in explosively declarative black font – MAD TITAN DEFEATED! UNIVERSE SAVED!! ASGARDIAN COUNCIL TO VOTE ON PARKING METERS!!!  

“We wanted you to have the first edition, your majesty,” the smaller of the two children says. “Sine qua non.”

“That’s pro bono, stupid,” the older one corrects, turning back to Thor. “But the subscriptions will cost you five dollars a week – we’ve got a form you can fill out if you want to do that right now.”

Thor takes the office paper-sized page very gently from the child’s grip and tilts the sunglasses up to examine its fine print, although he has not slept all night and morning sunlight drives through his eyes like a railroad spike.

“How,” he says, “did you make this?”

In answer the younger child takes his hand – Thor finally remembers their names; the girl is Magnhild and the little boy is Hervor – and they lead him to a room around the back of the corner grocery store that doubles as the village’s post office. 

On a table inside sits a lumbering desktop computer from the first decade of the twenty-first century and a used HP printer that shakes like a bullet tumbler when it spits out a page; a third child is changing the ink cartridges and one girl of about fifteen or sixteen, at least to mortal eyes, sits writing something in her notebook. They both look at him. 

Thor loosens his hand from the younger child’s grasp to find his fingers and glove are covered in a bright orange dust. He frowns.

“We had to bribe him with cheese puffs to keep him from telling people,” says the oldest girl with her notebook. “Every Midgardian town’s supposed to have its own newspaper, isn’t it?”

“And ours has more to talk about than most, I suppose.” Thor makes a serious display of walking around the computer and examining the still-damp papers they have printed before he hunkers down to study a set of lay-outs on the floor. “Would you like me to get you something more efficient?”

“You can if you want, your majesty – what we really need is an advice columnist, though.”

At this Thor peers up at her. Her young face is stolid and hard and slightly ashen beneath its dark complexion, but then all the children’s faces in New Asgard are this way.

“Oh, I’m hardly qualified to serve in a capacity like that,” he says. “I don’t even listen to myself a better part of the time – wouldn’t you rather have something for these comic pages instead?”

“That’s going on page four beside the advertisements.” She folds her hands in her lap. “Page three’s for the advice column. It won’t matter what you say – people won’t have to give their names and they’ll read the paper every week just to see if their letter’s been printed yet. It’s all about business strategy.”

“Ah.” He forgets the cheese puff dust and wrings his hands as he thinks. “And why me, exactly?”

The child blinks in surprise. “Because you’re the king, your majesty. Who else would we ask?”

The other children look at him in silent agreement. A heavy, tired flatness comes into Thor’s heart, and he is preparing to tell them they should ask their fathers, or their mothers, or their grown siblings or their grandparents, who have lived just as long as he has if not longer and have no doubt understood the experience far better, but he clamps down on the words in an instant.

He gives both his knees a hearty slap as he gets back on his feet.

“Well, there can’t be any harm in trying,” he says. “What shall I call myself?”

…

The first letter arrives shortly after the fourth edition can be printed. It has been stuffed into the tin watering can Valkyrie has nailed up beside the back door to serve as their confidential-only mailbox.

_Dear Friend,_

_I am in the midst of a dispute with my neighbor. He cannot keep his pigs from my vegetable garden and says I cannot keep my dogs out of his yard, which is quite false. What should I do?_

_Signed,_

_Frustrated_

Thor stares at the letter, sagged back in a chair that squeaks plaintively whenever he swivels around in it. 

He considers going to the ice-chest to consult with another strong drink, four emptied bottles of which are already aligned on his desk like the soldiers in a firing squad, but determines that the head of a king dispensing sage advice to his people ought to be a little clearer than that. 

He tears off a sheet of notepaper to compose his reply.

_Dear Frustrated,_

_My recommendation would be to challenge this individual to a duel; as the one who accepts the challenge he will be permitted to choose the weapons and the field, but as the challenger you will be paying him a great compliment by recognizing him as your equal._

_You may also be less frustrated by the end and you would be astonished at the number of friendships I have begun by being punched in the nose or hit with a car._

_Good Luck and Fair Fortune,_

_A Friend_

_…_

_Dear Friend,_

_The cable in this place sucks. Who do I make a complaint to?_

_Signed,_

_Noobmaster69_

Thor sharpens his pencil to a precise little point. The children have offered him a space in the back room where they run their newspaper from, which now features a sleek laptop with a full suite of design software and a digital printer.

The youngest one asks Thor what he is smiling about when he brings over a cup of coffee. Thor does not answer. 

_Dear Master of the Sixty-Nine Noobs,_

_If you would be willing to disclose your exact location, I may be better able to assist you. I have certain connections._

_Good Luck and Fair Fortune,_

_A Friend_

_…_

_Dear Friend,_

_There is a boy I like very much. He is smart and funny and we have been friends practically all our lives, but I don’t think he likes me the same way. Should I still tell him how I feel?_

_Signed,_

_Confused_

Thor spends longer with this one, mostly because it turns his mind unwittingly back towards a young green-eyed woman with a head of shining black hair and an unfailing sword and wise, gentle counsel whose words – or the words beneath the words – he never truly listened to until he remembers them now.

He goes through a half-box of bathroom tissues wiping his eyes and blowing his runny nose and then he writes his answer.

_Dear Confused,_

_Your friend may perhaps still be a bit thick in the head, for all that you praise his cleverness and his goodness. It happens._

_I should say that it is better for you to tell him and let things fall where they may.  Who knows what might come of it? If we could see the future our lives would be very different, I think, but as it is we must know things and learn things one at a time – go and find out what happens next._

_Good Luck and Fair Fortune,_

_A Friend_

_…_

_Dear Friend,_

_I’ve been trying to get along with my sibling all my life – two thousand years of it, mind you – and I still haven’t figured it out. He’s all I have left but I don’t know what to do._

_Signed,_

_The First-Born_

His reply is very short and runs two lines down the left-most column, though it takes him a full day to determine what he wants to say, and even this only comes after spending several hours talking it over with Korg as they share a midnight box of rice puff cereal.

_Dear First-Born,_

_Keep trying._

_Good Luck and Fair Fortune,_

_A Friend,_

_…_

The shortest letter Thor ever receives is not really a letter, not exactly, because it has been written onto the inside flap of an otherwise empty and unaddressed envelope that has been rolled up into a spindle and jammed down the spout of the watering can. Thor does not recognize the handwriting.

_Dear Friend,_

_Sometimes I feel very alone._

_Signed,_

_Somebody_

Thor composes this reply in five minutes on the back of the same envelope.

_Dear Somebody,_

_So do I. And, as you can see, now that makes a pair of us._

_Signed,_

_A Friend_

_…_

Periodically he mails the papers to Barton, Rogers and Bruce, accompanied by color photographs and sticky notes that call their attention to particular bits of information.

Barton’s youngest child Nathaniel makes artistic clippings from them and once or twice brings them into school for show-and-tell; Rogers, who requires spectacles nowadays for detail work, nonetheless reads every edition back to front, including the local advertisements for vacuum cleaners and coffee house coupons; Bruce keeps the editions saved in a manila folder and writes back that Thor should get an e-mail like everyone else, to which Thor responds by sending the newspapers via raven rather than the international postal service.

(Sooner or later everyone in the village figures out who is heading their advice column, of course, but by some tacit agreement they never say it to one another.) 

The Weekly Gjallarhorn goes on to report new birthdays, new marriages, new crops, new ventures, new school productions sung in the old languages of the ballads; the word ‘new’ comes up quite a lot, in fact, since his people are all strangers here together and are doing almost everything for the first time, but Thor supposes that is the whole point.

…

**Author's Note:**

> The Gjallarhorn, in Norse mythology, was a horn owned by Heimdall so powerful it could be heard throughout the nine worlds whenever it was blown. At Ragnarok it was said that Heimdall would sound the horn and summon all the gods to battle against their gathered enemies, but being the mast-head for an amateur newspaper seems of at least equivalent importance.


End file.
